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An Unexpected Discovery

I am a digital packrat. I will save anything, and have no issues with creating .ZIP files of whole sections of a hard drive. Tonight, I found myself browsing through my archives, looking for a quiz/survey that I used several years ago before starting a new D&D campaign. I stumbled upon an archive in an archive, which held notes for my favorite campaign ever, as well as some character write-ups that I’d forgotten that I’d lost.

What follows is a brief fiction piece I did for a character named Anton Lybarros, a guild thief and fledgling wizard in an unnamed city. I briefly considered using this character in a Midnight d20 game (because it had just come out), but I wound up shelving it, owing to the fact that I began playing my paladin, Aric Seles, in my friend’s homebrew D&D campaign.

I hope that you enjoy it.

From the journal of Anton Lybarros, known as “Knife”:

I checked over my shoulder again, just to be sure. Great, the thug was still attempting to shadow me. When will they learn that my size doesn’t make me easy prey?

Voices in my head screaming in protest, I turned down an alley, heading away from the marketplace where my errands had taken me. Sure enough, my “shadow” was still following me, oblivious to the fact that I was leading him. Why do they always have to be this stupid?

Turning a corner at an intersection of alleys, I hopped lightly up to a low-hanging roof. There, I waited. Somewhere overhead, a flash of light lit the night sky, briefly illuminating the arena I chose for this confrontation. The rumble of thunder that followed momentarily muffled his footsteps, but not enough. I wasn’t guild-trained for nothing.

He turned the corner, and stopped. I smirked. It was finally dawning on him that I wasn’t easy prey. He drew his short sword, the blade making a hideously loud rasp as it was drawn clear of the scabbard. Another flash of lightning, and I could see that the blade obviously had seen better days.

This time, though, the thunder was accompanied by the patter of raindrops as the storm began in earnest. Shifting my feet slightly to get a better purchase on the roof, I leapt from the roof, vaulting over the thug to land lightly behind him. It was only the work of a second, but I had drawn both of my signature daggers, yanked them across his unprotected hamstrings, and had him down.

“Please, milord, I meant no harm,” he cried pitifully as he turned over and saw me standing over him. “I ain’t no robber, or nothin’. I was guarding your way home. Don’t you see, it’s not safe for a man such as yourself to be out at this time of night.” I considered knocking him out cold, but it occurred to me that he was doing a lot of talking.

“You meant me no good, either. In fact, I would say that-“

I barely avoided the downward slash of the sword coming out of the same corridor the thug had just emerged from. Rolling to my feet some distance away, I saw that this new companion was bigger, and meaner, than the thug. Obviously, this one had some ogre blood somewhere in his blood.

“You meat for Flarg, and pretties go to Nasen.” The brute, Flarg, looked down to Nasen, saw the blood, and got an evil glare in his eyes. “You hurt Nasen, you die painful.”

He took a thunderous step toward me, and I saw my chance. Thrusting my blades back into their sheaths, I began the gestures to a spell. He stepped closer, hurrying now that he knew that I was casting a spell. As he was bringing his sword back for a vicious swing at my head, my fingers slung the sand that I had gathered into them.

Flarg blinked for a second, yawned, and fell backward with a wrenching “crack” as the Sleep spell took effect. Glancing around the mountainous lump, I saw that Nasen was asleep as well. Excellent, it worked better than I had dared hope.

Walking up to them, I relieved them of their meager coins, and threw their weapons into the nearest sewer grate. Pulling my cloak back over my head, I walked away from the mess, and wondered what people would make of it. Overhead, the storm continued its deluge, while I sought proper shelter for the night.